Sinners & Saints

Sermon delivered at Central United Methodist Church, Richmond, Indiana, November 2, 2025

All Saints Sunday – Luke 19:1–10

Our reading today comes from the 19th chapter of Luke, but I want to rewind all the way back to the beginning of the book and read verses 1–4 from New Testament Scholar N.T. Wright’s The Bible for Everyone translation:

1 Many people have undertaken to draw up an orderly account of the events that have occurred in our midst.

2 It has been handed down to us by the original eyewitnesses and stewards of the word. 

3 So, most excellent Theophilus, since I have traced the course of all of it scrupulously from the start, I thought it a good idea to write an orderly account for you, 

4 so that you may have secure knowledge about the matters in which you have been instructed.

To our modern ears, these words might sound like a preface — the kind we’re tempted to skim past. But this, my friend, is the start of the good part. Luke tells us he has talked with eyewitnesses and “stewards of the word.” Because of his attention to detail, I find myself returning to Luke’s gospel more than any other. It’s rich, yet still invites beautiful and unsettling questions — questions I hope you’ll explore with me today.

Let’s return to today’s gospel reading — a story we find only in Luke.

When you hear the story of Zacchaeus, what comes to mind?

For many of us, it’s that Vacation Bible School song:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he…

You may even remember the hand motions. 

I’m remarkably BAD at memorizing scripture, but given my familiarity with this VBS and Sunday School staple, I can gloss right over this story thinking I already know all of it. Yet, there is so much more to the story than just this catchy little song. 

There are many ways to read Scripture, but one of my favorite methods comes from Midrash, a Jewish interpretive practice that invites readers to enter the text and explore its depths.

In Christian circles, this tradition sometimes takes the form of what the Rev. Dr. Wilda C. Gafney calls Sanctified Imagination. She describes it as “the fertile creative space where the interpreter enters the text, particularly the spaces in the text, and fills them out with missing details: names, backstories, descriptions of scenes and characters.” It’s the holy work of telling the story behind the story.

So I invite you to join me in a little sanctified imagination today.

Luke tells us that he gathered his gospel from eyewitnesses and storytellers, but this story of Zacchaeus appears only in his account. So where did he hear it? Who told it to him?

Was it one of Zacchaeus’s children or grandchildren — people who grew up hearing about the day their father or grandfather climbed a tree to see Jesus? Or perhaps Zacchaeus’s transformation became so well-known that the story lived on in Jericho long after his death.

However Luke learned it, this encounter clearly mattered. It’s a story about how grace finds us — and how we respond when it does.

Luke writes that Jesus was passing through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem — a steep, dangerous climb of nearly eighteen miles. We can imagine Jesus stopping to rest, staying perhaps a day or two in Zacchaeus’s home before the final leg of his journey. What else was said between the two men? Zacchaeus was wealthy. What was the experience of the others in his home? His family? His servants?

And Zacchaeus — this man we remember from our children’s song — was no innocent figure. He was a chief tax collector, wealthy, and deeply unpopular. He was a Jewish citizen who worked for the oppressive Roman occupying force - and worked for them by taking money from them. It’s likely that he not only took money directly from people but also from the tax collectors who worked under him. And, because he had give Rome what was Rome’s, they likely charged the average Jewish citizen far more than what Rome demanded so that everyone throughout the pyramid got some money. 

So when Jesus called him by name and said, “Come down, for I’m staying at your house today,” the crowd erupted: He has gone to be the guest of a sinner!

Before we go any further, I want to pause and ask you: Who are you in this story?

• Are you Zacchaeus, desperate to see Jesus but unsure if you’re worthy?

• Are you Jesus, seeing holiness in someone everyone else has written off?

• Are you part of the crowd, standing at a distance, shouting or even just muttering in judgment?

• Or maybe you’re taking a page from Demi Moore’s character in “A Few Good Men? where she said, “I have no responsibilities here whatsoever.” 

Theologian Erna Kim Hackett reminds us that, in reading Scripture, we often practice what she calls Disney Princess Theology [1]. We cast ourselves as the underdog hero rather than the oppressor, villain or even just a bystander. But using a practice like Sanctified Imagination invites us to take a more honest look — to imagine ourselves from every angle.

No matter who we are in the story, one truth stands out: Jesus chose relationship over rules.

As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes, “Every time God forgives, God is saying that relationship is more important than God’s own rules.” [2]

This is one of Luke’s most persistent themes — that God works through sinners and that Jesus steps over the boundaries of Scripture and culture to choose love.[3]

Luke places this encounter near the end of Jesus’ ministry, one of his final personal interactions before Jerusalem. Jesus has taught mostly through parables, but here the parable becomes flesh. Grace takes on skin and walks into Zacchaeus’s home.

Pastor and Author Nadia Bolz-Weber writes in her book Accidental Saints,

“What makes us the saints of God is not our ability to be saintly, but rather God’s ability to work through sinners.”

That’s what happens here. A man everyone despises becomes a vessel of generosity and joy. Zacchaeus doesn’t wait for approval. He simply acts: “Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I’ve cheated anyone, I’ll repay fourfold.”

This brings us to All Saints Day. 

This day isn’t only about remembering those who have gone before us. It’s about remembering who we are — and whose we are.

In Catholic tradition, sainthood is a formal process that begins years after death. But for us Protestants, sainthood is both more ordinary and more radical. We honor those who shaped our faith: parents and grandparents, mentors and friends — all imperfect, all beloved.

All Saints’ Day reminds us that God’s grace moves through ordinary people. It’s about transformation, not perfection.

Luke’s story of Zacchaeus belongs here because it’s about what happens when love finds the wrong person and still calls them by name. When we remember the saints, we remember a God who refuses to give up on anyone.

The saints we honor — the famous and the quiet — practiced forgiveness, shared what they had, stood beside the hurting, and let love reshape their lives. They lived their faith on earth to make it a little more like heaven. And we can continue that work each time we choose love and relationship over rules. 

That’s what Zacchaeus did. He didn’t wait for another life to begin his transformation. He started right then, right there, in his own home. And Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

The last time I stood in this pulpit was January 9, 2021, when I eulogized my mom, Mae — someone many of you knew — at a service we couldn’t celebrate as we would have liked because of COVID. She is the name I carry on my heart all the time. 

All Saints’ Day reminds me that she, too, belongs to that great cloud of witnesses. But it also reminds me that I do, too — and that all of us do — not because we are perfect, but because we are loved.

To live as a saint is to let that love flow through us, shaping our lives, touching others, and carrying grace into the corners of the world that need it most.

So today, as we remember the saints, let’s remember what we’re truly celebrating: Not the perfection of a few extraordinary people, but the faithfulness of a God who gets holy things done through flawed human beings.

All Saints’ Day isn’t only about memory. It’s about invitation. It’s Jesus calling each of us by name — just as he called Zacchaeus — to climb down from whatever tree we’ve been hiding in and come to the table.

God’s grace isn’t fragile, nor is it reserved for the deserving. It welcomes our questions. It’s stubborn. It’s generous.  And it calls us down from our trees into a new way of living.

Amen.

Benediction

May we, like Zacchaeus, hear our names called again.

May we open our doors to grace.

May we give generously, love boldly, and live knowing salvation has already come to our house.

Amen.

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[1] The article that this quote is from does not appear to be available online anymore. However, you can see the full quote in Zach Lambert's excellent book, Better Ways to Read the Bible.

[2] This quote comes from Rohr's book Falling Upward. My favorite of Rohr's books is The Divine Dance, although you can't go wrong with anything Rohr has written.

[3] In addition to NT Wright's excellent Luke for Everyone, I also highly recommend Adam Hamilton's Luke Bible Study.